Letter To The Dark Poem by Jane Springer

I write you on a host of unseen things: The fine impression of bones
dissolved in the face of a stone—

on tendrils of incense allemanding through the first ambrosial jasmine,
verdant & white-starflower spring.

The water in play beneath a frozen river.

I write you on the hair of space parting to make way for the barge
of my heart to move on past an outworn parchment of:

Small town fairs of sheep.
Hardware stores, their sawdust scent & basketfuls of penny nails.
Patina gilding courthouses' copper domes of & bells tied
to adjacent gallows.

Sometimes trees reaching to touch over houses empty themselves
of atoms so I may write you on the crawl-space of insects.

Whole nights pour out their prisms of thought so I may write you
on all of night—

& even now I write you on the crystalline ladder of light the indigo
swallowtail climbs from the roots of dawn into this full-blown morning.